Event Write-Up

By Angela Hunter (baocmeetdirgmail.com)

On Sunday, March 4, 2012, over 200 people showed up to the Tilden Park "B" event, and COOL & Winter Series season finale event — and what a gorgeous day we had! Sunny and warm enough for those socializing in the assembly area, but not too hot for those out "enjoying" the steep terrain that is Tilden.

Joseph Doetsch set the standard seven courses, taking full advantage of the built-in "gnarliness" factors found at Tilden — something our BAOC regulars are used to, but probably a surprise to our two visitors from the ROC South Africa and Quantico O-clubs.

Mystery at Tilden — or the Case of the Disappearing Controls

One of the more interesting challenges of the day wasn't found on the more advanced courses, but was created when controls went missing on the White and Yellow courses. We were a bit concerned at base camp when we had reports that three of the common controls for these two courses had gone missing. Our course setter, Joseph, took off to replace the missing controls as quickly as possible, and to nose around to find out what was happening. The mystery was soon solved, however, and the park employee who had been dutifully removing foreign objects from the trails returned them to us. Those, coupled with a fourth control that somehow managed to relocate itself out on the advanced courses, resulted in a period of confusion in the E-punch tent. But our stalwart E-punch team worked together to return chaos to order, giving us reliable results at the end of the day.

Course Results

Of the 23 timed entries on the White course, Jamie MacLean took first place and Natalie Pelayo came in second.

With at least 37 entries, the Yellow course was not only the most popular course of the day, but also perhaps the most contested, with only a 27-second spread between the top three finishers. Gian-Andrin Coolen took first place amongst the boys, with Julia Doubson and Natalie Kim, first and second place winners for the girls, coming in hot on his heels. (The fact that the Yellow course is the "home course" for the fourteen Middle Schools entered in the COOL league may have something to do with the large number of entries on this course!)

The Orange course was enjoyed by at least 27 runners, with William Morris coming in well ahead of the pack for the men, and Ruby Spring taking first place for the women.

In the advanced courses:

The Brown course winners were Wes Willett in first and Ingert Svard in second.

The Green course was dominated by COOL Varsity runner Matej Sebo.

First place for the Red course was taken by François Léonard.

Mikkel Conradi and Dennis Wilkinson traded off legs through much of the Blue course, with Mikkel finishing less than 2 minutes ahead.

Thanks to our Volunteers!

This was my first time as an Event Director, and my first time seeing all the activities required from start-to-finish to make one of our events happen. It reminded me a lot of watching a group of carnies or roadies at work, turning a quiet hillside park into a bustling event full of action, and then returning it to its original peaceful state hours later.

Thanks to all the people who helped make our own three-ring circus the fun event it was:

To Jay Hann, for getting things started behind-the-scenes in December.

To Joseph Doetsch for the courses he set, and Jonas Kjäll, for vetting them.

To Bob Cooley, for creating and printing the maps for Tilden (and for all the other times he has kept us "on the map").

To James Wilson and Steve Haas for keeping the Registration lines flowing.

To Peter Graube for running the Beginners Clinics, and patiently welcoming many beginners to the joy that is orienteering.

To the cadre of Berkeley High School parents who helped out with monitoring the food table (Teddi Baggins), the Starts (Susan Wittstock and Karen Laws), and the Finish/Results (Dan Calloway and Karen Laws) — and generally cheering for anyone who came running towards the Assembly area with a map in hand.

To our (mostly) unflappable E-punch volunteers: Jay Hann, Jeff Lanam, Rosemary Johnson, and Evan Custer. They reconfigured the courses and controls on the fly, and three of them still managed to run courses!

To the gentleman who came down and helped me close the Start area. I'm sorry I didn't get your name!

Also see control-by-control timing in the WinSplits results (http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/show_event.asp?id=19953).

You can see the event map with the actual routes traveled by participants, and draw your own route for comparison, in RouteGadget (introduction; this event (http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=286)).